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Ned Vizzini was an author and TV writer, best known for 'It's Kind of a Funny Story'

By Hillel Italie Associated Press

Posted:
12/20/2013 11:53:28 PM MST

Updated:
12/20/2013 11:54:22 PM MST

NEW YORK -- Ned Vizzini, a popular young adult author and television writer who wrote candidly and humorously about his struggles with depression, has committed suicide. He was 32.

Vizzini jumped off the roof of his parents' home in Brooklyn on Thursday, said his brother, Daniel Vizzini. New York City's medical examiner's office confirmed Friday that Vizzini took his own life and had sustained blunt impact injuries consistent with a fall.

Ned Vizzini's autobiographical novel "It's Kind of a Funny Story" was adapted into a feature film of the same name. A resident of Los Angeles in recent years, he was a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction and spoke around the country about mental health and the healing effects of writing. On his website, he recommended Andrew Solomon's "The Noonday Demon" and the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" to readers coping with depression.

"At his signings, countless kids would approach him to say that he changed their lives -- he gave them hope," his longtime publisher, Alessandra Balzer of Balzer + Bray, said in a statement Friday.

"It's Kind of a Funny Story," praised by The New York Times as "insightful and utterly authentic," was written in just a few weeks and published in 2006. Set in New York City, and 85 percent true, according to Vizzini, it told of an ambitious, but overworked high school student who considers jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge and ends up in a psychiatric ward.

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Vizzini's other books include "Be More Chill" and "The Other Normals," both of which told of young people who feel like outsiders.

Asked once why he wanted to be a writer, he responded: "I knew that I wanted to be a writer because I wanted to do something that had the potential to outlast my own death."

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